Microsoft Azure is great. We know that and if you’re reading this then you probably already know it too. However the challenge many customers have is tracking and planning spend.

You may set out using Azure with a clear cut budget and expected usage but this can change. Data can grow in unexpected ways and additional Azure workloads can easily be added. With many providers, the first time you see how much you’ve spent is when your invoice arrives. However, in this scenario, you have no opportunity to gauge your spend during the month or amend your usage to bring this spend within budget.

This is one of the reasons we’re launching My Azure, a tool available through our customer portal, PROVIDE™ to give a detailed breakdown of Azure spend.

My Azure is all about providing visibility and, therefore, control of your spend during the month.

Optimise Azure

With Cloud Direct’s My Azure dashboard, you can view your Azure spend as it’s consumed. Every single aspect of your Azure usage is broken down to provide clarity about where different costs are coming from, even down to individual virtual machines. This knowledge is particularly valuable as it provides an opportunity to review virtual machine sizes, or even automate a shut down outside of business hours to optimise your Azure.

Forecasting Azure spend

The My Azure dashboard, goes one step further – it will even project your total months’ costs based on current usage, helping you see forecasted spend for the month.

Planning spend for development projects

For companies with development teams, controlling and understanding  the cost of test environments is important to understanding your business’ total outlay. This can be particularly difficult for testing and development projects when as usage is sporadic. With My Azure, you’re able to quickly and easy drill down into the detail of your Azure estate and costs giving you further control and information to feed back into the business.

Cloud Direct Azure customers can also access their previous 12 months usage information, providing valuable insight to how your Azure spend has changed and to help future planning.

We will be launching My Azure at this year’s Microsoft Future Decoded event so if you’re attending visit us on stand 9 for a demo. If you can’t make the event then please get in touch and one of the team would be happy to show you a demo of the portal.